


I'm Longing to Linger Until Dawn, Dear

by littleyounggun



Category: Rise of the Guardians (2012)
Genre: M/M, Slow Build, bit of a character study i think, vague allusions to spring and summer seasonal affective disorder
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-26
Updated: 2012-12-26
Packaged: 2017-11-22 13:46:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,686
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/610471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleyounggun/pseuds/littleyounggun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dreams are the only thing that keep Jack company for a very long time.</p>
<p>Enter the Guardians, particularly the one he clashes with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I'm Longing to Linger Until Dawn, Dear

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Ella Fitzgerald's "Dream a Little Dream of Me"
> 
> Okay, so my very first ROTG fanfic! This was a request from someone very close to me (I was promised frostbite art in return WONK). I kind of went overboard with the whole deal but it was fun so OH WELL!   
> Sorry it took me a while to finish it, darlin.
> 
> I made up some summer sprites just because. And also a treefolk which I borrowed from Arthur Spiderwick's Field Guide to the Fantastical World Around You by T. DiTerlizzi and Molly Black, but Holly herself I made up (you'll see). 
> 
> I don't know any Australian slang so forgive anything weird/awkward.

When Jack dreamt, he wasn’t alone.

In the unreality, he drifted with purpose, flew with exhilaration. Children squealed with joy when they saw him, and parents pulled their warm clothes tighter around their children as his cold breeze followed him. He was expected to be somewhere ( _anywhere_ ); had a place to go when it was time to settle, like a pair of arms to fall into at the end of the day.

Jack had those dreams, and they were usually nice. Early on, it became routine to let them weave into this thoughts after he awoke, to continue them in daydreams as he flitted from blizzards to temperature drops to snowball fights. He toyed with the fantasy that someone was waiting for him, hoping to catch a glimpse of him, _something_.

Years (and years _and years and years_ -) of practice helped him keep the illusion. It made the cold less of a bite and more a curl of contentment, a lazy cat stretching and pawing its way into comfort. His chest loosened, limbs lightened, until his smile came easily.

When Moon came up and Jack’s surroundings quieted, he settled in a branch or on a roof or let Wind cocoon him in a breeze that carried him along the purple skies where he would have a view of families and acceptance and _belonging_.

And if sometimes those same things and those same dreams made Jack pull up his hoodie and curl his arms around his legs, well, that was his business and his business only. A blemish in the sky and a gust of air could only tell him so much and get him so far.

There was no one else to see him.

-

When Jack dreamt, he wasn’t alone.

When he woke up, he was.

-

Often after a good dream and a bad day, Jack wondered why he bothered waking up anymore.

-

After a snowball fight in which joyous laughter still rung in his head; after people gracefully flew across an ice rink with beaming faces; after beautiful creations of art which ranged from ice sculptures to snow men to snow angels to snowflakes were all created and proudly put on display, Jack Frost answered his own question.

\--

The day Jack found other beings like him, he was overwhelmed. There’d been uncontrollable joy and rambling from him.  He babbled excitedly until the initial rush calmed, but he still could not manage to wipe the grin off his face. With amused glances, the other sprites managed to get words of their own in.

They called themselves – and Jack – immortals and side-eyed their surprise at Jack not having been aware of their existence before that moment. Jack privately thought it was not really fair of them to judge him. From the moment he came into existence, all he had been given was _Jack Frost_ and then he was all on his own- remained that way for a very (veryveryvery) long time.

They didn’t stick around for very long. Two of them were summer sprites (Jack was told he was a winter sprite, and he made a face at the condescending undertone) who felt discomfort in his element- which he could understand since he imagined it was the same thing he felt during the summer. The remaining one was a treewoman named Holly who spent most of the winter season sleeping. The few instances she was awake and Jack was around, she made soft conversation that still filled him with glee.

It helped assuage the loneliness, knowing that there really were others out there (that they could hear him, see him) even if still too much time passed between the moments he got to spend with them. He wasn’t complaining though.  

He could live like this.

-

They started leaking into his dreams from time to time, particularly those Guardians he kept hearing about so much. Jack sought to meet them when he had hours to spare and had filled up his mischief quota of the day.

He did not get the chance to converse with them (they were busy, maybe some other time, surely) but the dreams still came. Dreams of what the inside North’s workshop might look like or a fairy building castles out of millions of coins or a tiny golden figure collecting bags upon bags of sand from the hot beaches Jack tried to keep a generous distance from.

And if the remaining Guardian was the one that sprang into his dreams more often than not, then that was just for him to know, the admission not to leave the barrier of his lips.

-

When Jack dreamt, he wasn’t alone.

Jack had those dreams, and sometimes they weren’t very nice.

Sometimes Sandman’s magic overshot or didn’t account for the wind picking up or a person shifting or a shadow lurking. He knew there were lots of sleeping people around the world, whether Moon was up or not, that he was constantly busy and keeping up with them all could not be easy in the least.

Jack tried very hard not to blame him. He really, really did.

Sometimes he just couldn’t stop the bitter blizzard or five that flared up when it was his time to dream, and he didn’t let anyone else blame him for that either.

-

The not-so-very-nice dreams tended to come during the spring, Jack eventually noticed.

He pegged the unpleasant visions to the vulnerability that came with having the majority of the world shift to a warmer temperature. (Although, thankfully, not all of it. He gave a grateful mental salute towards Russia and Alaska and Norway, just to name a few.)

If anyone (of the few individuals he spent small amounts of time with) noticed the haggard features that Jack adopted during the warmer seasons, or the way his clothes fit baggier on him, or the extra tenseness in his frame, no one bothered to mention it.

-

After truly befriending the Guardians, becoming one himself, fighting Pitch Black, and regaining his past life, Jack’s dreams were different. Jack was different.

For one, waking up wasn’t about living in a daydream anymore.

-

When the five of them got together, it was a frenzy of friendly jabs and pitching into each other’s jobs, mostly for a change of pace. Jack would spend days wrapping presents and building toys (and _not_ sneaking off with a few to give to Jamie and Sophie in advance). He stood in line at various Laundromats and went around the world trading teeth for coins. He totally did not fling more pastel paint at his fellow guardians rather than the eggs themselves, no matter how many times he was accused of it. Jack’s and Sandy’s jobs weren’t really tasks that could be divisible and neither truly minded the lack of help. In Jack’s mind, the company was more than enough.

And if throughout all of the shenanigans, he kept a crystal eye on the twitch of whiskers when he brushed too close, the shivering of a tail when he sent a cool breeze, or the flop of ears when he chuckled in the distance, well...

-

Jack wondered if he appeared in the _kangaroo_ ’s dreams as often as the other did in his.

-

Sandy must know, Jack thought. He was the Guardian of Dreams, after all. But did that really mean that he was aware of what happened in every single one? Did he actually orchestrate and plant every dream? Or did he simply provide the magic to make “ _Sweet dreams_!” wishes come true and leave the rest up to the individual’s imagination?

Jack wasn’t certain, but with every sly look and knowing glance, he figured the dreamer was figuring it out one way or another. And if he purposefully sent Jack those dreams of snow bunnies, well; Sandy was always a silently mischievous little bugger, wasn’t he? He simply hadn’t pegged Sandy as a cupid, too.

-

Cold and dark went well together, someone had told him just under a year ago. At the time, it had been about the closest thing he had ever felt to being wanted, included, because they _wanted_ Jack to join them - because they _understood_ _everything_ he had felt for _years -_ and not because someone else had told them to.

The feeling had ended quickly, leaving him quietly stiff, numb.

In the present, however, Jack could only think about how badly cold and pastel clashed. The fact that the Guardian of Hope brought up the blizzard of ’68 (on _Easter Sunday_ , for Moon’s sake!) whenever he felt like picking a fight did not help to quiet the storm of thoughts roiling in Jack’s head.

Despite the uncertainty, his April-muddled brain deemed it a good idea to drift and tumble into the Warren. His clumsy entrance only brought minimal damage (just some spilled paint and excess glitter, no biggie, really, he would fix it, he promised! _Ya better, ya gumby!)_

His arrival was received with dismissals and his refusal to leave with suspicion. Jack attempted to make his face as innocent as possible, making the Easter rabbit all the more wary.

Accusations and barbs – or their usual way of saying hello - over and done with, Bunny grudgingly allowed Jack to stay as long he as he made himself useful without making a mess of things.

The looks Bunny sent his way were not the most subtle, egging Jack to push back the weariness to hover over the meandering egg shells and send a breeze their way to make their paint dry faster. It would pick up production. Or something. He figured the glances were due to his lack of productivity, but they continued coming his way with something else that Jack couldn’t decipher, unnerving him.

-

The Warren was a large place of rolling grass and rivers of paint and warm blue skies. For all intents and purposes, Jack should hate it here. The warm grass should irritate his skin. The bright skies should make him dizzily warm.

There were, however, nooks and crannies and ledges and alcoves that looked like they’d be awesome to perch in, give him breaks from Spring.

Jack glided off in a random direction under the pretense of sending his breezes elsewhere, not bothering to wait and listen if his host had anything to say about it. Making sure to keep true to his word, he scoped a dark little perch and settled.

-

He was sitting comfortably between two rocks, watching the eggs roll by, when he started nodding off. Realizing it like a slap, he sprung up with an alarmed yelp. Leaning heavily on his staff, he marched slowly up and down besides the eggs, determined to stay awake as he had for the past week or so.

It was only when he started squinting at his surroundings that he realized it was gradually getting darker. With a small grunt of confusion, he glanced up and only then noticed the gray clouds that had gathered and the spike in humidity.

He dropped to a defensive crouch, eyes glued on the sky with a sharp glare. He smelled the rain coming and prepared to bolt. April showers bring May flowers, right? Well, they also happened to make him sick, figuratively and literally.

He called up a trail of ice to make his escape smoother. As he slid back into, his feet stepped into more sludge than ice, making him flail in surprise and lose the grip on his staff. He fell ungracefully, but stopped caring when he felt the rain drops begin to prickle his skin.

Jack scrambled to his feet and yanked his hoodie to cover his head, backing away tensely. Nevermind that it didn’t matter which way Jack was facing, he was too riled to deal with this.

When the rain started to pelt into him, he broke into a run.

-

By the time he finally found Bunny, Jack had lost his staff (the damn eggs had taken it with them and he couldn’t find it; when he complained about it, the kangaroo had chortled and said, “Well, it’s called and Easter Egg Hunt for a reason, mate.”). He was so drenched he genuinely wondered if he was actually melting instead. And he was a complete mish mash of exhaustion, nausea, and anger.

So he really couldn’t help it when he jabbed an accusing finger into the Easter Guardian’s fur with what he thought was a raging glare schooling his features. The angry rant he had in mind got caught in his throat at the look Bunny was giving him.

 “I thought you looked bad when you came in, Frost, but now _wrecked_ doesn’t even cover it.” The pooka crossed his arms, covering his concern with a frown. “When was the last time you ate, eh? Or even slept?”

Jack huffed, looking off to the side. “It’s spring. I don’t need to sleep the way I usually do.”

“Well that’s a load if I’ve ever heard any! You think you’re the only seasonal sprite I’ve ever known? If anything you oughta be hibernatin’ right now. I shouldn’t have even let you come in here. Probably makin’ everythin’ worse.”

“If I were to hibernate, I’d sleep through my own season.” Jack glared.

Bunny sneered. “You know what I mean, Jackass!”

“You talk to the children with that language!?”

“Oi, don’t think you can get away with changing the subject--!”

“Or are you still so busy bringing hope that you don’t actually have time for them?”

They melted into their usual arguments after that, and Bunny actually forgot how awful Jack had seemed in the first place. The realization made him stop in the middle of his sentence, but the winter sprite barreled on, unknowing that he was the only one yelling now.

Now, now Bunny noticed everything that Jack had been hiding with his words, his tone, his voice. He wondered how he did it when his body language and his face were so expressive, how he managed to practice his voice into a distraction when he had been alone for so long.

Finally, Bunny threw his hands up in the air, crying, “Oh, blast all!” He jabbed at Jack’s face, startling him into silence. “You forced me into this, ya ninny.” And with that, he swiftly picked up the youngest Guardian and slung him over his shoulder, ignoring the protests and weak fists pounding into his back.

-

The Warren was Bunny’s home, yes, but the majority of it was a workplace. Within the Warren, Bunny had another home, a place more for leisure.

That was where Bunny was taking him now. The large house was made of stone and covered in vines with windows that were paned with wood. Tiny flowers bloomed all over it. Butterflies and birds flew around it. It screamed of spring.

“If you think bringing me back here is going to help, you’re wrong,” Jack muttered dejectedly.

Bunny frowned at the other’s sudden limpness. “Well someone’s gotta watch out for ya since ye’ obviously are not doing it yourself, and since you’re already here…” He pushed his door open with an unoccupied paw. His muttering about taking care of children and how that job didn’t end even when it came to dealing with other Guardians carried them through the halls. Jack, worryingly, simply took it.

By the time Bunny arrived to the room, he realized the reason for Jack’s sudden compliance was merely due to the fact that he had finally fallen asleep. Carefully, he laid him on the bed, debated on whether to cover him with the blankets, finally decided not to, and resisted the urge to brush his hair.

Running a tired paw down his face, Bunny hopped to the door, shot one last look at the sleeping man in his bed and rolled his eyes at himself, then finally returned to work.

-

When Jack dreamt, he wasn’t alone.

Now he remembered.

The delicate ice beneath his bare feet protested even with the softest movements he could manage. The fearful whimpering a few feet ahead of him made him berate himself for allowing her to skid all the way to the center of the lake, right into danger.

He murmured comforts to her, visible puffs of breath pushing past his lips. A smile wavered on his features as he inched closer to her, begging every power out there to let him have this one, let him do this, _please_.

There was a heart-stopping crack. Panicked, she shifted forward to reach him, but the ice had had enough. He lunged, crying out to her as she disappeared before he too was possessed by the consuming waters.

Jack had those dreams, and they were bad.

In the nightmares, he would survive.

-

When Jack’s eyes snapped open, choking on his breath, he was surrounded by ice. It did nothing to calm him, but it gave him a task to focus on. Not the wild beating of his heart or the impending panic threatening to squeeze him into a little ball.

Having ice nearby meant Jack had to solidify it, make it safer, so he worked on that. Conjuring the cold and adding layers and layers of ice on top of what was already there. The frost spread all around him in jagged little tendrils until they stiffened and froze over creating waves of spikes.

He heard the yelp of a distant protest and had his concentration jarred when there was continuous thumping from the other side of the ice, making the weaker icicles fall and shatter. The ice that protected him gave into the spreading spider web lines across its surface.

No, no, _no,_ he refused to let that happen. _Now_ there was actually something he could do about it, and he planned to take full advantage of that. He had to add more layers, more ice. Make it sturdier, thicker, stronger. He’d be _damned_ if he was to let a single crack into the frozen expansion ruin it. Never again. No one would fall into darkness because he couldn’t do his job well enough. He would _melt_ himself before letting heat weaken his creation.

At least, that’s what he continued to tell himself.

But it still happened, every year. It stabbed through Jack with guilt each time, appropriately _hot_ and painful. Nature had a natural course, after all, no matter how hard he fought to defy it, aching to keep each body of water frozen over sturdily. It always became the sickly, delicate sheet it when the warmth seeped in, and there was nothing he could do about _that_.

(Jack’s mind ran in circles.)

The hauntingly familiar cracking reached his ears. The wind howled with Jack’s frustration. For a minute, his entire world spiraled into forcing that chink, the gap, the weakness to disappear, to protect innocent people, to prove his worth, and maybe, maybe then, someone would notice his efforts, _him_.

“ _Jack_!”

The deja-vu pierced through him, startling Jack out of his element. The abrupt silence was dizzying. The snap of weariness from exerting all of his energy made his limbs stutter and collapse. Stunned and confused, the hoodie was pulled over frosty hair, face hidden in the arms that gripped his knees tightly.

The thuds from outside stopped, too. Gradually, the ice around him thawed, melted- (Just like it always did and why did he _always fail_ \--)

“…Jack?” It was Bunny’s voice, he finally recognized, on the other side of the ice. He was sharply reminded of where he was:  the Warren. In April. During preparations for Easter, preparations he was ruining.

Bunny continued trying to speak to him through the ice, but the yawn of self-pity had swallowed Jack whole, and he could barely bring himself to care as he huddled on the floor next to the slowly melting bed.

He doesn’t know how much time passed, but there were puddles around him and mounds of sludge scattered across the room by the time Bunny finished hacking through the ice wall, boomerang in hand. Jack only moved from his curled position when a paw was placed on his shoulder.

-

Bunny doesn’t laugh or get angry or make him feel worse than he already did. Jack was grateful.

They made quips at each other simply because that was how they functioned. Still, neither saw it fit to comment on how gently Bunny cradled Jack after scooping him off the ground nor how Jack burrowed himself into Bunny’s fur.

-

They ended up in a bedroom that was not completely trashed by winter.

There was no prodding or questioning but Jack shared his story anyway because there was a paw rubbing circles into his back that was welcoming and a presence that was comforting and reassuring. He let his tongue loose and his mind open. Out rushed his emotions and thoughts and memories. Worries. Fears. Hopes.

Bunny still said nothing, nodding and humming and nosing his hair.

Jack felt warm, but it didn’t hurt.

-

The tension leaked out of Jack’s body between the touches and the trust.

In the hazy world between sleep and wakefulness, the myth who saw great value in dreams asked in a sleepy slur, “What do you dream about, Bunny?”

Jack leaned into the touch that began pawing at his hair, down his neck. Bunny took a deep breath, quietly clicked his tongue.

“Snow,” he replied and then lulled Jack into sleep with soothing circles on his back.

-

For the first time, when Jack dreamt, he _was alone_.

The unforgiving ice gave away beneath him again. The terror battled with the painful cold that swallowed him. He became a mess of fighting limbs and heavy clothes that dragged him down down down.

His eyes stung and his vision flashed. With amounting horror, he thought his head would burst until he could no longer stand the pressure constricting him, and he gasped breathlessly, choked, noiseless.

The water rushed into him relentlessly. The intense pounding in his head ceased. There was only dark and cold and fear.

Then, suddenly, calm like the moonlight. He was timeless, suspended.

Jack dreamt and he was _alone_.

For the first time, when he woke up, he wasn’t.


End file.
